10/24/2010

Empty your heart and mind completely, and receive the haiku as a present into this emptiness.You can not MAKE a good haiku happen, it has to make itself through your empty mind.Do not try to be witty or poetic or "deep" or anything ... just let nature do the talking through you.

If affective perception determines much of haiku feeling, selfless perception often determines how haiku consciousness exists. For this reason Robert Spiess, the long-time editor of Modern Haiku, preferred the term "feeling" (senses centred on nature, aware) to "emotion" (very strong subjective feeling centred on non-rational mind) when discussing haiku poetics.

At the most basic level the personal "I" is usually left out of haiku. Basically, the personal "I", the Freudian ego and its mental constructs, let us say its emotion, gets in the way of the haiku experience. Empirical procedures and rational thinking that determine the Western mind also get in the way.

The Zen Buddhist idea of an empty mind, the openness to phenomenological presence, is suggestive of an appropriate mental climate.

A Zen saying explains the situation: "One thought follows another without interruption. But if you allow these thoughts to link up to a chain, you put yourself in bondage".

How does one not get bogged down in thought and experience haiku consciousness? A haiku by Kai Falkman offers a response:

the skier stopsto leave roomfor the snow's silence

The first two lines of this poem describe the cessation of what Zen Buddhists call the "monkey mind", a continuous flow of thought. Enlightenment or clear mind, the present-tense clarity of perception, cannot occur when the monkey mind is present.In effect one must clear one's mind to allow things to speak for themselves.The phenomenological reduction, the skier stopping, accomplished, the snow, its silence, can speak for itself. Here the personal "I" is not used. The poet, his will, is not stopping the skis. The snow's silence is. The "I" is not what is important. What is important is the snow's silence. The stopping is a mere notation leading to the snow's silence. In many ways this poem becomes an evocation of a kind of enlightenment experience.

A monk asked Li-shan: "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?""There is no ‘what' here," said Li-shan."What is the reason??""Just because things are such as they are," replied Li-shan.

Thirty spokes are united in one hub (to make a wheel);But the usefulness(the function) of the wheel depends on the empty space- the center hole of the hub.Clay is molded into a vessel or a bowlBut it is the empty space within that makes it useful.

Doors and windows are cut out of the walls of a house,But it is the empty (open) space inside that makes it useful (livable) .

Therefore take advantage of what exists (what the mind receives),But use the emptiness (to open a way to enter in tune with the Cosmic Mind).

this was not just any dark night sky, it was one with thunderclouds racing in many layers of gray like spotlights and would make a haiku in itself to discribe it.I want to make sure, using the adjective, that it was a very special night sky and I did not realize it in the beginning because I was focussed looking below in my valley for the fireflies. Only when I looked up I saw what I was missing there ...

looking for fireflies ...I almost missthe night sky

that gives me a much more quiet evening which I experience most often, but not the drama of the other night.

2/10/2008

An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

"How does it taste?" the master asked.

"Bitter," spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."

As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked, "How does it taste?"

"Fresh," remarked the apprentice.

"Do you taste the salt?" asked the master.

"No," said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. . . .

Contemplative Taoists will be happily to sit with yogis and Zennists for as long as is reasonable and comfortable, but when nature tells us that we are 'pushing the river' we will get up and do something else, or even go to sleep...

Taisen Deshimaru (birth name: Yasuo Deshimaru) (1914-1982) was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher. Born in the Saga Prefecture of Kyushu, Deshimaru was raised by his grandfather, a former Samurai before the Meiji Revolution, and by his mother, a devout follower of the Jodo Shinshu sect of Buddhism.

He received dharma transmission from Master Yamada Reirin.

In 1967, Deshimaru came to Europe and settled in Paris in order to fulfill his master's wish and spread the teachings of Zen. In the 1970's, his mission grew and he received dharma transmission from Master Yamada Reirin and became kaikyosokan (head of Japanese Soto Zen for a particular country or continent) in Europe.

He trained many disciples, and was the catalyst for the creation of a multitude of practice centers. His teachings and multitude of books helped spread the influence of Zen in Europe and America, particularly of the Soto sect. He founded the AZI in 1970 and La Gendronnière in 1979. He died in 1982, after having solidly established Zen practice in the West.

..... Takuan was a famous Zen Priest, who invented this dish. It is very popular. Zen monks are supposed to eat their slices of Takuan radish without making any noise. There are usually two slices on the plate, used to carefully clear out the bolws afer eating and then munching the Takuan in silence.If you want to know the secret of eating Takuan in silence, contact me :o) !

Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out."Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"

"Brother," the second monk replied,"I set her down on the other side,while you are still carrying her."

Greetings, GabiI love this stone buddha. i remember that photo of it with the frog in its eye. and now to see the same buddha with a minomushi (bagworm) on its beard is so very funny. i'm so glad you shared your friend's wonderful humor :)hugs, B.

The first fresh breeze after a hot day, finally!Autumn is here in my valley!It is a feeling of joy and relief that the hot and humid summer is over,buton the other side, it is a reminder of harder times to come soon, winter looming ...